Memoirs of trips down the Mississippi
River can blend together until it’s hard to
separate the adventures in one from the adventures
in another.

Marcus Eriksen has written a
different kind of memoir. Although he grew up near
the river in New Orleans, it wasn’t until he
was a Marine, stranded with his unit in Kuwait long
after the Gulf War was supposedly over, that he and
a friend conceived their journey down the Mississippi.
He didn’t launch his boat for another 10 years.
When he did, it wasn’t a canoe or a log raft,
but a makeshift pontoon floating on hundreds of empty
soda bottles. He named it Bottle Rocket.

Eriksen’s tone of voice
makes his book stand out. He is not floating down
Mark Twain’s river. He is a tough, disillusioned
ex-Marine who uses action-filled language that moves
the book along at a good clip. Episodes from Kuwait
alternate loosely with episodes on the river. Eriksen
is a good storyteller and a truth-teller. He does
not try to make himself, the river, or the people
he meets and travels with look good or look any other
particular way. He is astute about his relationship
with his companion Jenna.

In the midst of an argument near
Cape Girardeau, Miss., they come upon a string of
barges “lashed together with two-inch-diameter
cables that stretch and moan as the river attempts
to twist them apart, and sometimes, to the fear of
deckhands, they snap, hurling themselves like a horizontal
guillotine against unsuspecting bodies.

“Traveling upstream in
the middle of the river, bearing down on our raft,
is a massive aggregation of thirty barges in a single
tow. Whitecaps form beneath the bow, which is four
barges across. It’s the largest tow I’ve
seen yet…

“There is another barge
behind the behemoth and another one at our stern.
I make a dash for the riverbank beneath the Cape
Girardeau bridge. Above the roar of the river, and
the roar of Jenna, I gulp a healthy dose of terror.”

His point of view is complex.
All this makes for a very interesting read.

Ericksen is now director of research
and education for a nonprofit marine environmental
organization. Top

This hard-cover book of black-and-white
photographs comes with an 18-song CD tucked into
a plastic flap inside the back cover. It’s
a great idea. You can look at the pictures while
listening to the tunes. There’s Greg Brown,
Joe Price, David Zollo, Radoslav Lorkovic, Pieta
Brown, Bo Ramsey and more, standing, sitting and
playing full out at bars, clubs and festivals in
eastern Iowa.

The photographs were taken over
a number of years with different cameras under different
situations. Some are motionless documentaries, others
are taken in the heat and glare of a bar where everybody’s
moving. The book itself is about the size of an old
78-rpm record. It would make a great gift.

Chad Pregracke’s account of the beginning
and development of his Living Lands and Waters organization, could
serve as a case study for how to get things done. He grew up on and
in the Mississippi and knew the Quad Cities stretch of the river intimately
by the time he was a teenager. He worked as a clammer, diving for mussels,
and was acutely aware that clammers were regarded as lowly river rats.

Then, with a bunch of river know-how behind him,
he asked big questions: Why was nobody picking up junk from the river,
and why were eyesores allowed to remain? Rather than casting blame
or making excuses or giving in to obstacles, he became an instrument
of change. In a short time, cleaning the river became his goal. There
was never a question that this is what he would do.

His character comes through in his stories: always
problem-solving, persistent, charming, self-effacing (sometimes feeling
like “a moron,” other times hoping something wouldn’t
turn out “too cheesy”) and amazed at the attention. Always
tireless and willing, he puts up with loads of discomfort and challenges.

If you like technical stuff about boats and such,
this is full of details about how Chad and his crew jerry-rigged the
equipment that they found or bought cheap, or constructed out of old
materials, or got donated. Chad’s stories are entertaining and
sometimes astonishing. I chuckled as I visualized some of his efforts,
like the time he scrounged up a John Deere tractor cab to use as an
elevated pilothouse to see the barge of trash.

Chad went from picking up trash alone, to leading
a crew. He learned how to raise money and find sponsors.
He became adept at it. Now in his early 30s, he has become quite a
national personality. Not bad for a clammer. Top

When the author’s father died suddenly in
Hannibal, Missouri — the town he grew up in — he left a
note describing an island in the river that he once visited
as a boy. Morris’ urge to explore the river and find this island
launches her journey.

She travels in September on a houseboat out of
La Crosse, Wis., with a father and son named Tom and Jerry.
She envisions window boxes, Weber grills and deck chairs,
not rusted railings, a broken head and dysfunctional stove. So it begins.
By the end of the journey she’s learned a lot about the river
and the tiny towns that dot its banks. For one thing, it seems almost
impossible to find a good cup of coffee along this stretch of the river.
She’s also
reflected enough on her father and herself to be ready
to begin the next leg of her own life’s journey.

Mary Morris teaches
creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and has written
six novels, three collections of short stories and three
other travel memoirs, including Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman
Travelling Alone. She is a very good writer, with an eye for descriptions
that set the scene, and an alert interest in people and the dynamics
between them. Top

This beautiful, comprehensive guide to butterflies
includes not just color photographs and species accounts,
but a very interesting section that outlines major ecosystems and natural
communities in the state, and lists places where these remain intact.
Where are the fens of northeast Iowa? Where can one find the butterflies
that hang out in glade prairies? The book gives the novice a basic
understanding of butterfly habitat and points him or her out the door.

There
are also range maps, a check list, a glossary of terms
and a section on how to attract butterflies, encourage
puddling, give them shelter and study them. All this fits nicely in
a compact book with an elegant cover. Top

Some science books for children are informative,
attractive, easy to read and written for a range of interest
levels. Children like them and adults like them. This is such a book.

It
invites young readers to pay attention to the nature around
them. The book describes a year in a typical Midwestern
neighborhood with a variety of habitats — rooftop, empty lot,
school lawn, railroad corridor, etc. We meet kestrels, robins, monarch
butterflies, nighthawks, frogs, rabbits, coyotes and other
common wildlife. Large type at the top of the page above the illustrations
leads us through the “story line,” while small bits at
the bottom of the page add detail for curious readers. Top

My feet are gritty with sand and dirt from the
shoreline. The adrenaline is still pumping through my veins,
because I’ve been looking over my shoulder for polar bears… All
this without leaving the comforts of my home.

I’ve been reading
Afloat Again Adrift, which tells the story of the author’s three
canoe trips on North America’s greatest
watersheds. The first began when he noticed on a map “something
very peculiar about northern Minnesota: not one but three
major watersheds begin there… From just about the same location
we could paddle three different directions and arrive at
three different seas: south to the subtropical Gulf of Mexico, north
to the subarctic Hudson Bay or east to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. New
Orleans, York Factory and the city of Quebec were all downstream from
my back yard.”

His three voyages took him north along the Nelson
River to Hudson Bay; down the Mississippi River to the
Gulf; and from the Great Lakes through the chain of lakes
to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Keith made the trips just a year or two
apart, so all are within recent memory. The tales he tells
are vivid. The trips are real. The dangers are not minimized.
Lessons are learned.

This book makes for great travel reading if you
have the urge to get out on the waters vicariously. You
can share a fresh roasted raccoon dinner and a cup of chicory
joe. Top

The Becoming of the Driftless
Rivers National Park (Wisconsin)

Bryan J. Stanley, 277 pages, $75.00

In this self-published book, the author argues
for turning Crawford County, Wisconsin, into a new national
park. The book makes a broad and interesting survey of the county’s
ecology, geology, history and resources to point out its importance
and the merits of opening it up for the enjoyment of the public.

The
Mississippi River forms the western border of the county
and the Wisconsin River marks the southern boundary. Prairie
du Chien is the county seat and its largest city. The county, with
its many steep rocky bluffs, is near the center of the Driftless Area.

The
idea is controversial, but Stanley’s plea is sincere, and
he has collected a welter of interesting information to
convince the reader of the importance of the project. The
writing is a little rough at times, and I did note a few inaccuracies,
but I also learned some things that I hadn’t come across in many
years of writing and reading about this area. The paintings of Mark
Mittelstadt and many photos of the area certainly do a fine job of
illustrating Stanley’s
points, but the dozens of two-page spreads of aerial photos
by Robert Hurt are breath-taking and show the big picture
of this beautiful county.

This large (8.75 by 11.75 inches), hardcover
book is printed on very thick paper, which helps justify
its hefty price. All profits from the book will be used
to help establish the park and to purchase and preserve other natural
areas within the Driftless Area, according the book’s dust jacket.

Stanley
is a resident of the Mendota Mental Health Institute in
Madison, Wis., where he was sent by the courts after the
fatal shooting of three men in Onalaska, Wis., in 1985. Top